Anyways. Back to the flow, Joe, and try to place the Aydin Coban part of the jigsaw in its proper context.

Once Amanda had dipped her toe into the sordid world of online webcam performances, she was practically doomed. Unless, of course, her parents had intervened, which they never did. She would have just been subject to a triple whammy, a quadruple whammy – heck, a googoltuple whammy. And there’s nobody on the planet who can untie all this unholy mess, but I’ll give it a try.

Whammy Number One: we know that Amanda and Bianca talked too much at school, and that all her friends found the evidence. I’m still not 100% sure what picture or video was found, but we can have a pretty good guess. We even have Amanda’s own words, stating that her friends found it all. Once that happened, the fallout was inevitable. The pictures would have hurtled round the Vancouver phone snaps grapevine in a matter of seconds, so any hate and abuse would have started to pile in then.

Whammy Number Two: even if her friends hadn’t found the stuff online, there were plenty of people interested. As I explained in yesterday’s post, there were a number of heroes and White Knights – mostly 4channers – who knew of Amanda’s performances, and they would have made moves to warn her and to get involved. And, as I stated, some of these people would have threatened disclosure to try and get her to stop. These people didn’t do it from malice – they did it because they knew of the dangers, and had to try to put pressure on Amanda to get her to quit.

Whammy Number Three: of the hundreds of people who not only viewed Amanda’s performance’s ‘live’, but also later, once the videos had been published, many of them would have been troublemakers. We know that Amanda had 150+ viewers on at least one occasion. A high proportion of these would be capping everything. I am even suspicious that BlogTV, or some of its moderators, were part of the game – watching out for episodes which they then, themselves, funnelled into subscription-paying websites like cameracaptures. It would make more sense – cappers had pride in their collections, and to overtly publish their ill-gotten gains, to hand them over anonymously to cameracaptures, would defeat the object.

But I will give Carol Todd one mark out of ten for her latest observation – the combinations of the first three whammys means that the list of suspects is huge. Let’s try a ball park figure. The entire juvenile population of Vancouver – let’s say 100,000, give or take. That’s a low estimate, as it was probably known across the province. Let’s imagine that only 1% of them could give a damn – that’s a 1000. But let’s extend it to the Internet. Worldwide. Amanda’s video on cameracaptures alone had 3,000 views. Cappers? Probably too many to count. 4chan heroes? My estimate? By now, at least a million people will have Amanda Todd stuff – and that is such a low estimate that it’s almost ridiculous. Going back to 2010, 2011? Who knows – but the idea that one man is central to it is preposterous.

The other whammys? Amanda’s hubris, her idea of being totally in control; her parents’ utter incompetence in allowing her such a free rein; the continuation of the activities; the ineffectiveness of the police, or any other authorities, in trying to stop it all happening.

But maybe one of the main problems, should any court case start, is that Amanda told so many lies. A defence lawyer will blow the story apart. At this moment in time, the Aydin Coban story is jumbled, and there is nothing definitive to work on. But Amanda’s ‘testimony’ is there – published forever. Written in stone. In a way, it’s unfortunate, as it will simply not stand the test.

But back to the Aydin story. As usual, just none of it fits. Amanda clearly stated that she was flattered and cajoled into flashing for one person, who capped one photo. And she clearly states that this person was a man. Yet we know that this part of the story is entirely fabricated. But what we have also heard is that Aydin Coban went online as a ‘jong meisje’ – a young girl. So it doesn’t tally. What also doesn’t tally is the part of the rumour factory that says that Aydin Coban extorted males. Sure, this matches up to going online as a young girl, but not as a male predator/stalker. And it doesn’t measure up to any charges of sexual interest. If Aydin Coban went online as an extortionist, the aim was to obtain money – one of the reports said that he followed up his online actions with a phoney father act – a father coming online to say how disgusted he was to find out what the men had been doing. This just doesn’t correlate with a ‘give me more shows’ approach. Like I’ve said – there’s not that much interest in getting girls to do more shows, when there are plenty to be found online anyway.

So far, this story is borderline hysteria. To extract every rumour and to investigate it will take time. It’s interesting to note that the story exploded not from genuine, factual reports, but from one newspaper in Holland who got wind of Canadian girl involvement, and said that Amanda Todd MIGHT be involved. So far, ALL of the story has been driven by the Press – and nearly all of it is speculation. Look closely – there is absolutely no official mention from the Dutch that Amanda Todd was involved. They haven’t even been that forthcoming in describing the charges in full. It’s all hooey.

But let’s just say that Aydin Coban IS involved? How? To what extent? And why? I will discuss this further tomorrow. Stay tuned.